China’s internet growth over the last few years has been nothing short of astonishing. Last month, China announced it had a total of 649 million online users by the end of 2014, which is half of the entire population of China – or double the entire population of the U.S. It’s easy to see why it’s the market that technology companies worldwide have set their sights on.

Storyful has long been dedicated to mining the social web to source and acquire the best user-generated content for brands and media. Our team strives to maximize the value and exposure of trending footage through a unique partnership between content creators and digital publishers. We have a library of thousands of videos that have to date racked up nearly two billion views on YouTube alone.

While Twitter, YouTube and WhatsApp dominate in the West, Weibo, Youku and WeChat are the kings of microblogging, video-sharing and social messaging services in China. Chinese internet users rely heavily on these new emperors of China’s social space to be informed, entertained, and inspired by stories around the world.

The rise of China’s online market makes its leading video site, Youku, a natural evolution of Storyful’s work in video. Every day, our journalists find, verify and acquire content that connects with users worldwide; because no matter what language is spoken, no matter where the video was created, there are moments of joy, surprise, wonder and laughter that need no translation. These dramatic, humorous, human moments speak to us all and can travel across oceans and borders to connect us.

Teaming up with Youku is a great opportunity to give a new audience a way to discover and engage with Storyful’s content. We believe the time is perfect to grow our footprint across an exciting new territory, and to deliver our authentic and unique content to the vast base of over 500 million monthly visitors to Youku.

Today, Storyful is excited to announce the launch of our Chinese channel: 搜视•歪事儿.

Storyful’s Youku page

Storyful hopes to make the channel a destination for authentic content and amazing UGC trending globally, a place to connect Chinese citizens with global social media in real-time. Storyful Viral’s Chinese brand will feature the most compelling and trending viral videos we license, ranging from adorable kids and funny pets to dramatic fails and wild weather events. Storyful also aims to collaborate with talented content creators in China and serve partners who have a special appetite for this region.

By pairing the reach of the Youku brand with Storyful’s unique editorial approach and journalistic strengths, our partnership will enable both organizations to engage new audiences in today’s video-driven generation.

]]>0Mark Littlehttp://storyful.comhttp://blog.storyful.com/?p=70072015-02-20T21:56:25Z2015-02-12T21:51:20ZContinue reading →]]>No human being should have to bear witness to the execution of another. But my colleagues at Storyful have been living with that obligation for years, as they process and parse increasingly brutal imagery from across the social web. And yet nothing prepared us for the killing of Muath al Kasaesbeh, burned alive in an act of almost cinematic evil.

My colleagues Jenny Hauser and Eliza Mackintosh have both written powerful posts about the wider issues arising from the killing. I end this brief series by writing from a deeply personal perspective, motivated by my profound impotence as a witness and possible irrelevance as a journalist.

I’m not alone in feeling a sharp reminder of a new reality, in which reporters have been dislodged as the ultimate arbiters of our collective understanding of the world. “Thanks to the ubiquity of social media,” wrote Andy Carvin, “It matters less what mainstream media chooses to do, as everyone online now has the capacity to view footage selectively, by their own accord.”

Clearly, that doesn’t absolve journalists, and it certainly doesn’t make them irrelevant. We have a critical, if poorly understood, place in the spread of information and images on the social web. The value of journalism, as a means of separating news from noise, has never been more vital.

History tells us that revolutionary shifts in communication bring upheaval. People cope with uncertainty by turning against those who disagree. The rise of the printing press heralded one of the most violent and chaotic periods in human history, as Nate Silver points out in his book The Signal and the Noise.

Today, the value of journalism is in the management of an overabundance of information. Reporters no longer own the story. Their job is to help filter a flood of competing narratives and to connect the most authentic voices to the widest possible audience.

They must also understand the historical significance of the rise of the eyewitness. What we couldn’t see, we couldn’t be held responsible for — but no more. The smartphone now bears witness to war, genocide and systematic oppression with unprecedented authenticity, if not always with consistency or impact.

Journalists have an obligation to build a historical record from an incomprehensible amount of content. Future generations will not forgive us if we don’t embrace our role as the archivists of now.

The killing of Muath al Kasaesbeh is a case in point. A mission-driven group of experienced journalists watched his murder so others did not have to. In cataloging every detail, they played the role of digital coroner, guaranteeing that the record of this crime will stand the test of time and, perhaps in some future court of justice, meet the standard of evidence.

To do justice to this task, the most barbaric video must be preserved in some permanent form. Those of us who have spent years curating social video can testify to the impermanence of YouTube videos, which can disappear for countless reasons. History requires us to download, archive and protect.

But what about an obligation to distribute? Do journalists have a responsibility to share what they see in real-time? I believe the answer is no.

Journalists play the role of connector, helping the most authentic sources reach the audience they deserve. They can also be the carrier, patient zero for a virulent strain of hate. The one thing they are not is the sole eyewitness to an event. They can no longer hide their choices behind an outdated duty to expose an unseen truth.

“Without communication,” said Marshall McLuhan, “terrorism would not exist.” The utility of terror is in direct relationship to the numbers who witness it. The rapidly evolving literature of online jihad is explicit in its embrace of “propaganda by deed”. In the words of one prominent jihadi, the “keyboard equals Kalashnikov”.

Today, propaganda is packaged in self-contained spectacles with a cinematic sensibility. The expert edits taking us from the somber, dignified face of Muath al Kasaesbeh to the gasoline-soaked torch of the executioner. The foreboding is sharpened by a carefully calibrated pause.

The journalist who has watched, catalogued and contextualized this savage ritual has done their job. Any further action makes them complicit in a unique form of social terrorism.

Some journalists feel obliged to confront their audience with the graphic reality of terror. But if they have reported from war zones, or natural disasters, they will know images of death are a Class-A narcotic whose impact is lessened every time it is administered. The more we journalists seek to shock in the service of truth, the deeper we sink into irrelevance. The more we compete for attention, the less chance we have of earning it.

The propaganda of the death cult is not ours to share. But neither it is ours to ban.

Yet, while journalists no longer have the right to tell us what to watch, they do have new obligations. The growth of information has long since outstripped our capacity to process it. If journalism is to remain relevant, it must give its users the ability to make choices in the face of unlimited choice. It must help humanity — and future generations of humanity — understand the savagery that killed a man called Muath al Kaseasbeh. But it must also free us of the obligation to witness his death through the eyes of his murderers.

]]>0jenny hauserhttp://blog.storyful.com/?p=67822015-02-20T21:57:13Z2015-02-11T20:49:15ZContinue reading →]]>When footage of a police officer being shot on the streets of Paris by the jihadists that attacked the offices of the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo emerged online last month, many felt that a line had been crossed.

Presented with such striking visual evidence of the incident, news organisations were in the difficult position of deciding how and if they should publish this material. Many used it, but in a heavily redacted form. The witness, who filmed and uploaded the incident from his apartment, later told the Associated Press that he regretted sharing the video, saying that he had “completely panicked”.

The graphic imagery that is now just a mouse-click away has stoked intense debate about its use by news media. The belief that the use of graphic images in news reporting is inherently ethically wrong is a predominantly Western one. This belief is as fiercely defended by supporters as a way to preserve the dignity and humanity of the victims as it is attacked by critics as a wish to sanitize unpalatable truths. The reality of modern news coverage often lies somewhere in between.

Following the Air Asia crash on December 28, 2014, Indonesian media screened images of the dead as their bodies were being recovered. To put this in context, Mark Forbes, news director at Australia’s The Age and a former Indonesia correspondent, wrote: “Screening such images is about more than satisfying morbid curiosities. Culturally, there appears to be more of a sense of confronting, and then accepting, death.”

As the ‘gatekeeping’ role over images of violence and conflict has moved outside the reach of news editors, there has been criticism over a perceived trend in mainstream media to reproduce graphic material. The argument goes that as news media is coming under pressure to compete with the spectacle that unedited real-time reporting on social media offers, traditional ethical standards are slipping.

It was video evidently shot by either a member of IS or a sympathiser that revealed the scores of dead Syrian soldiers killed after the capture of an airbase in Raqqa in August. Another video showed troops being marched through the desert in nothing but their underwear ahead of a mass execution. By comparison, the videos showing the beheadings of IS hostages James Foley, Steven Sotloff, David Haines, Alan Henning, Peter Kassig and others were distinctly marked as originating from the group and distributed via a hosting site. Social media platforms such as Twitter, YouTube and Facebook quickly moved to remove the content. IS themselves edited out the moment of the killing, as if aware that the depiction of the act itself was not made for broadcast.

These videos were evidently of public interest, as they were the only evidence that these American, British, Japanese and French hostages had been killed. In Western media, the videos were very rarely used in an unmediated form — usually a screenshot from the footage was published in its place.

At Storyful, if the content of a video is of public interest, we will investigate it, seek to verify it and alert our clients to its existence. Since much of our work is done as a business-to-business news agency, we are often in the fortunate position not to have to ponder over how much graphic imagery is too much for public consumption. We will typically alert our clients to whatever content is considered of public interest, along with a warning. In the case of the IS videos, Storyful downloaded them through the hosting site where IS typically publishes videos in order to verify them as much as possible and inform our clients as to their content.

This sort of work helps shape the narrative of the stories of the day. For instance, the graphic images streaming out of Gaza last summer gave a form to the impact of the Israeli airstrikes that few would argue did not add an important dimension to the news coverage.

Though Storyful largely does not differentiate verification practices between graphic and non-graphic material behind the scenes, elsewhere in our processes there are many ethical considerations that come into play.

Videos depicting scenes of violence, death or containing explicit language are, with few exceptions, not published directly on Storyful’s audience-facing platforms or in any public work it does for its clients and partners (such as the Facebook Newswire).

We may occasionally post graphic content to the Open Newsroom, clearly labelled with a warning about its content, for the purposes of crowdsourcing more information around the circumstances or collaborating on verification with experts and fellow journalists. We may use this option, for instance, when trying to establish the facts around claims of atrocities and human rights violations.

As a social media news agency, Storyful also frequently licenses user-generated content, helping uploaders to earn money through the use of their material by news organisations. We have specific guidelines in place when it comes to working with uploaders around footage depicting death and violence. For one thing, Storyful can’t do business with uploaders in countries under sanction, and many videos containing scenes of violence by nature stem from conflict zones.

There’s also a safety issue to consider, as encouraging anyone to put themselves in a potentially dangerous situation in the hope of payment is ethically dubious, at best. Fostering a potential hunt for morbid spectacles with the promise of compensation may also undermine the citizen journalism that grew out of a personal motivation to publicise what one has witnessed. Because of these factors and others, we never commission user-generated content, but rather only deal with discoverable content that has already been published.

Graphic material is recorded and uploaded for many reasons: as evidence, a call for help, a threat, a howl of rage at injustice, and, yes, sometimes out of simple morbid fascination. Whatever the motivation, unedited images of human suffering and death on social media have reignited a valid discussion about what it means to bear witness, where the public’s sensitivities lie and ultimately where to strike the balance between the two.

A video released by Al-Furqan, a media arm of the Islamic State, showing the captured Jordanian Air Force pilot Muath al-Kasaesbeh being burned alive in a cage was unthinkable in its ruthlessness, even for the extremist group.

The horrific killing sent a message — the Islamic State is raising the stakes in their brutal propaganda war.

Social media has become a battleground in today’s conflicts, offering a platform for both sides to drive agendas, curry favor, recruit followers, boast of victories, and instill terror in the hearts of opponents. And no other group is more adept at pushing propaganda than the Islamic State.

Despite the group’s bloody history, the 22-minute propaganda video showing the killing of al-Kasaesbeh, who was carrying out airstrikes when his F-16 went down in northeast Syria, was the most gruesome yet. Having a hostage from the US-led coalition campaign offered IS a unique opportunity to send a heavy-handed message, and they did.

The video surfaced on social media shortly after the Islamic State issued an ultimatum threatening to kill the pilot if the prisoner Sajida Reshawi was not released by Jordanian authorities and delivered to the Turkish-Syrian border by sunset on January 29. The complex high-definition footage, released on February 3, would have taken a substantial amount of time to script, stage, produce, and edit, indicating that the pilot was killed days, if not weeks, before January 29.

Jordanian State TV soon reported that al-Kasaesbeh was killed by Islamic State militants on January 3, at least a month before the propaganda video was released and shortly after he was captured, in late December. An account affiliated with a Raqqa-based group of anti-IS activists known as Raqqa is Being Slaughtered Silently suggested that the pilot was actually killed on January 8. On that date, the account @alraqqawi tweeted that an “IS leader said they had killed the Jordanian pilot by burning.”

While the exact date of the filming could not be independently verified by Storyful, the video signaled that the hostage swap was a perverse charade designed by IS to escalate the theater around the pilot’s death.

As if to underline that fact, the media wing of the Islamic State in Raqqa — the group’s de-facto capital — released footage showing a public viewing of al-Kasaesbeh’s killing on a large outdoor screen in the town center. While the video played, an interviewer polled Raqqa residents about the killing. In one chilling interview, a young boy says that he was “very happy” and wishes there could be more pilots to be captured and burned.

The video carries the official logo of the Islamic State media wing in Raqqa, and was shared on a Jihadist forum that posts official IS content.

Jordan received Islamic State’s message loud and clear.

King Abdullah II of Jordan vowed on February 4 to exact “earth-shattering” revenge in response to the grisly killing of al-Kasaesbeh. In swift retaliation, Jordan hanged Rishawi, a failed suicide bomber with ties to al-Qaeda in Iraq; and Ziad al-Karbouli, a lieutenant for the same branch of al-Qaeda, according to Petra news agency.

The Jordanian Armed Forces released an official video on February 5, described as showing parts of Operation Martyr Muath.
Within days Jordan had launched Operation Martyr Muath, releasing its own counter-propaganda footage of Jordanian F-16 fighter jets conducting airstrikes against Islamic State targets in Syria. The video shows members of Jordan’s military scrawling messages to IS on bombs to be dropped in the mission. “From a brave Jordanian woman to you Baghdadi,” one message addressed to IS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi read. One pilot was pictured holding a sign that read, “Do not believe that God is unaware of the actions of the unjust.”

While Jordan did not report the locations targeted in airstrikes, Storyful was able to geolocate the aerial footage to Al Shadadi in Syria’s Hasakah province, a stronghold for IS militants.

An aerial view of the Jordanian airstrikes can be seen in this screen grab from an official video. A row of six distinctive warehouses are visible below the site of the explosion (outlined in green). A curved V shape, which looks like a road, is also visible (outlined in red). The same warehouses (in green) and road (in red) are highlighted on a screen grab from Google Maps (lower image). The location is on the eastern edge of Al Shadadi.

An Islamic State-affiliated web forum posted photos of the same incident, which tallied with the location.

The gate seen in the first image is visible in this 2013 video, described as being filmed at the same location. The image was geolocated to Al Shadadi.

As Jordan entered its second day of airstrikes, the Islamic State released a statement that would prove to be yet another unexpected twist in its bizarre propaganda war. The Raqqa information office of the Islamic State released a photo set on February 6, announcing the death of 26-year-old American humanitarian worker Kayla Jean Mueller, who was taken captive in August 2013. The photo set was described as showing the aftermath of Jordanian airstrikes, which purportedly hit a building on the outskirts of Raqqa where Mueller was being held hostage.

The images in the photo set feature the watermark for the Islamic State branch in Raqqa.

In a statement released alongside the photos, IS claimed that the airstrikes were carried out at noon during Friday prayers and that no militants were injured. While the statement asserted that the strikes took place on Friday, the photos are dated to Thursday according to the Islamic calendar.

At the time, Jordan rejected the IS statement as “criminal propaganda.” On February 10, Mueller’s family released a statement confirming her death. According to reports, Islamic State militants sent an email, which included photographs of her corpse. The Mueller family also shared a letter written by Kayla last year, in which she wrote, “I have surrendered myself to our creator.”

Letter written by Kayla Mueller, released by her family.

At the time of writing, it was still unclear if Mueller had been killed in an airstrike or at the hands of the Islamic State.

In response to the news, President Barack Obama said that, “No matter how long it takes, the United States will find and bring to justice the terrorists who are responsible for Kayla’s captivity and death.” The president sent Congress a proposed joint resolution on February 11, asking for formal authorization to use military force against the Islamic State.

This tangled, ongoing exchange signals a disturbing escalation in “eye-for-an-eye” retaliation, much of which is playing out on social media. The momentum behind these tit-for-tat actions builds with each new propaganda video, photo set, or statement that surfaces — and now seems unlikely to stop.

“Jordan’s interests would still be better served by holding back and making a clear distinction between themselves and these criminals running around Syria,” Human Rights Watch’s representative in Amman, Adam Coogle, told the New York Times. “Today it’s hard to make that argument. People are calling for vengeance.”

]]>0Aaron Mc Nicholashttp://blog.storyful.com/?p=69622015-02-03T16:49:57Z2015-02-02T18:14:16ZContinue reading →]]>It comes as no surprise that one of our most popular categories of video continues to be weather. Extraordinary weather events can affect us all, and Storyful is all about people. With heavy snowfall in the US and temperatures plunging in Europe, we thought it a perfect time to explore the phenomenon of winter viral videos.

There’s nothing more common in cooler climes during winter than ice, but this video, recorded in Slovakia, reminded a worldwide audience to consider how beautiful icy weather can be:

Early interest in the video was possibly sparked by its appeal to the popular fantasy of walking on water. But as the number of people watching grew to millions, a debate started about the veracity – and safety – of what the video was showing. A meteorologist analysed the video and determined that the person behind the camera was not a reckless daredevil for walking on the ice. So, Storyful felt confident in helping this short piece of footage reach a worldwide audience.

Interest in a video can be like the weather: starting slowly, but then building into a storm of excitement. There is a flurry of activity that we can often predict, but unlike meteorologists, we also have tools to feed the flow and we can see how a viral video spreads (click image to see it full-size):

Most of us don’t even need to see a lake completely frozen over to get excited about the winter. That’s why, when the Storyful video team came across this clip of a lively reaction to snowfall in the west of Ireland, we were soon caught up in the amused responses from those watching.

The uploader told us he could barely believe the attention it was getting, with comments coming in from North America, Europe and Australia. Thanks to the work of Storyful’s licensing team, the video was even featured on the website of a national newspaper in Sweden, with the uploader receiving fair compensation and credit.

If the reaction of one Irish lad to the snowy weather didn’t give the world enough laughs, Storyful also helped a second one explode in popularity during the same week and protected the rights-holder while doing it. Ruarí McSorley’s short interview on Northern Irish broadcaster UTV gained millions of views in no time at all, but these views were based on a YouTube channel that UTV had no control over. Storyful’s protection model helped UTV in the same way it helps every video owner we work with. Copies of the video were claimed on behalf of UTV using the YouTube tools made available to partners, and though the copies still remained online, the views they gained began generating ad revenue for the rightful owner.

As important as it is for the original owner of the video to get the compensation and the credit they deserve, Storyful is also committed to separating fact from online fiction. When thousands of commenters pass judgement on your video, it can be difficult to have your voice heard. With a video as shocking as this, that’s of critical importance.

The driver who recorded this video faced a plethora of comments concentrating on his apparent decision to abandon the scene after a truck missed him by inches on the New Jersey turnpike. With Storyful working to verify the facts behind the video, a false story was prevented from spreading. Millions of viewers were reassured that, in fact, the driver had stopped recording in order to pull over and make sure the truck driver was not seriously injured, which he showed in a second video.

These videos take mere minutes to record and upload online, but they can leave a profound impression on everyone that interacts with them through social media. If you’ve recorded an amazing view of a storm, captured a hilarious moment of man vs. nature or any remarkable weather footage, we’d love to see it.

]]>0lobnaabulhassanhttp://blog.storyful.com/?p=68872015-01-29T08:55:50Z2015-01-29T08:02:17ZContinue reading →]]>Yemen was thrown into chaos on January 19, when clashes erupted between Houthi rebels and presidential guards in the capital, Sanaa, which Houthis had agreed to avoid. The combination of a limited media presence on the ground and a lack of information-sharing infrastructure (less than 15 percent of the nation has access to internet) meant that initial reports on social media were difficult to verify.

Doubts surrounding the accuracy of updates swirled as dramatic events unfolded around the presidential palace. As conflicting information emerged, and while advising clients to proceed with caution, Storyful was able to make sense of the situation by surfacing authoritative voices and authentic content on social media. However, faced with only scattered content, in which distinctive signs of dates and locations were difficult to confirm, there was no straightforward path to pulling the most accurate stories from Sanaa together.

Still no official news on TV about fihgting- heavy gun shots sounding closer & closer! #Yemen

From as early as 4am on January 19 in Sanaa, reports of gunfire and clashes emerged on social media from locals in the heart of the city. One Facebook user, Abdel Nasser Wasel, said clashes were taking place on South 60 Road, on the Presidential Bridge. Storyful used this location as a basis to corroborate further accounts and video content purporting to show events taking place in the vicinity of the presidential palace, which is adjacent to South 60 Road.

An example of the content found was this Instragram video, from the afternoon of January 19. The Al Saleh mosque, which is clearly visible in the footage, and can also be seen in this geolocated Panoramio photo, is on 70 Road, perpendicular to South 60 Road, and in close proximity to the presidential complex.

Sakkaf’s voice was only one in a social media community that Storyful journalists could reference for corroborating the situation on the ground. These sources offered eye-witness reports and volunteered credible translations of key events.

Reminder – Very important Houthi leader speech in 35Min. Will translate/tweet live. #Yemen

On January 20, reports emerged that Houthi rebels were looting weapons and vehicles from a depot on the grounds of the presidential complex. Shortly after, a pro-Houthi TV network, Al Masirah, reported that the Houthi fighters had foiled such an attempt by an unidentified group.

Storyful journalists found this footage, showing a group of men in a military Humvee, published to YouTube on January 20. The original video was shot vertically; the video below is a version rotated and reuploaded to YouTube by Storyful.

With scrapes flooding the web and low-resolution footage generally concealing distinct landmarks, it was challenging to verify the date, location and origin of the clip and thus corroborate the claim that army vehicles had in fact been seized in close vicinity to the palace gates on South 60 Road.

The version of the video linked to above was the earliest version available online, although it had been scraped by other users on other social platforms, and the uploading account had provided footage from Sanaa in the past. Scrapes of this footage could be identified using timestamp comparisons and tended to include the typographic mistake the original uploader had used in his description.

The source communicated with us and provided other footage, similar in quality and in location, with audible gunfire, which he described as showing rebels’ attempts to enter the presidential palace.

While the source showed consistency and authenticity, it was necessary to geolocate the footage showing the Humvee independently in order to substantiate the contested claims of activities around the palace. Examining satellite imagery of the nearest cluster of buildings to the palace on South 60 Road showed several elements consistent with the footage. The satellite imagery shows the distinct building that, in the footage, is behind the Humvee. It has a cleft in the centre of the main structure. The building is boxed in green below. A corresponding pedestrian walkway traversing the two-lane road to the east of the main structure can also be seen (see below, boxed in blue). A red sign over the road can also be seen in the footage and on satellite imagery (below, boxed in red). Finally, we could identify the building on the opposite side of South 60 Road, due to the distinct white box-shaped extension visible briefly at 1.25 in the footage and boxed in white in the satellite imagery below.

Protests and Aftermath

On January 26, anti-Houthi rallies took place across the country, especially near Change Square, Sanaa, in protest against the rapid takeover of power orchestrated by the Houthis. Reports emerged that Houthis were dispersing these rallies and detaining a number of demonstrators. While footage began to circulate online described as showing protesters regrouping following a Houthi attack, most did not show actual attacks. Storyful could not confirm the reports. However, Storyful journalists were able to find footage of a rally in which gunshots were audible.

A simple Google Images search of Change Square yielded a number of photographs showing the distinct obelisk visible in the footage.

We cross-checked the image search with satellite imagery, which corroborated the location of the obelisk, showing a triangular landmark south of the square that is consistent in relation to the nearby roads, and thus confirmed the location of the footage.

Despite these successes in verifying reports from Yemen, limited on-the-ground media presence and a lack of distinct demarcations of date and location remain a challenge for observing the rapid developments there.

Storyful journalists will continue to monitor the situation in Sanaa, as well as in Aden and Marib, where the events in Sanaa are already beginning to have repercussions. In doing so, we continue to call on a variety of sources and verification methods to ascertain and share the most authentic reports.

Our viral team is engrossed with visually interesting content, from jaw-dropping weather events to amazing soccer strikes and everythinginbetween. As we constantly strive to find new, authentic content as early as possible and work with those creators to maximize the value and exposure of their footage, we also look back at our own library to monitor for trends and patterns that we can make the most of going forward.

Sometimes these patterns are more complicated to measure like tracking the overall shift to mobile viewing. Other times, it’s something as simple as the word cloud above. The cloud was generated using the titles of our top 200 monetized videos on YouTube since January 2013 (which amounts to 1,054,533,499 views, by the way) and gives us an insight into recurring terms so that we can better cultivate our social media monitoring tools.

There are some unsurprising cameos based on trends in online content in the past 24 months: ‘Ice,’ ‘bucket,’ and ‘challenge’ are all prominent, and while you might not first expect ‘Harlem,’ a quick look to the right of it finds ‘Shake’ and brings us back to this viral phenomenon:

Other terms substantiate what the viral team at Storyful do on a daily basis. The most-used term is ‘original,’ perhaps reflecting our mission to discover, verify and promote only authentic content. Likewise, ‘amazing,’ ‘surprise,’ and ‘hilarious’ are all highly featured too, reflecting our commitment to finding the most compelling content every day.

Another look shows some terms that even we wouldn’t have guessed, such as ‘Para’ or ‘Implants.’ It takes a bit of digging to figure out why ‘Bachelor’ flew so high:

Or that the biggest ‘Fireball’ hit wasn’t in the sky, but at a wedding:

Taking a look back through these terms helps us to remember that it’s not just users who love surprises, but that we constantly need to be searching for the unexpected ways videos can delight, even in things that first seem dull like changing a roll of toilet paper.

Artillery fire near the Ukrainian town of Volnovakha, south of the city of Donetsk, struck a civilian bus on January 13, killing 13 people. Ukraine’s internal affairs department spokesman Vyacheslav Abroskin confirmed the incident in a post on Facebook, claiming that the artillery was fired by pro-Russian separatists near the Ukrainian town. However, separatists denied responsibility.

In the hours following the incident, Denis Krivosheev, Deputy Europe and Central Asia Director at Amnesty International, called for an investigation into the attack saying, “it must be investigated thoroughly, impartially and independently, as a possible violation of the laws of war”. Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko, who was in Estonia at the time of the incident, described the attack as further “evidence” of violations of the Minsk agreements, urging the world to “express solidarity with Ukraine”.

In the aftermath of the incident, Storyful discovered and verified a number of videos and images from the scene, giving greater clarity to what took place. Some of our work is outlined below.

Video and photographs which circulated on social media in the aftermath showed the bus with its windows blown out and its side pock-marked with shrapnel blast marks. Blood could also be seen having stained the snow alongside the vehicle.

VK/Information Resistance

On January 14, CCTV footage was posted to Facebook, showing the dramatic moment that the bus was hit by a projectile at the checkpoint in Volnovakha. The source of the video confirmed to Storyful that he was a soldier based at the checkpoint in Volnovakha.

At 0:55, in this verified video, you can see a snowman on the right-hand side, in the distance. A screengrab from the video is posted below, with the snowman circled in red.

YouTube/Alexander Zzhevsky

This is the same snowman that the source poses with in the following photo, taken on January 12, and obtained from the source’s Facebook page.

Facebook/Євгеній Блашніков

A screengrab from Google Maps seen below shows the exact location of the checkpoint. It is situated just outside the Ukrainian town of Volnovakha, south of Donetsk.

Google Maps

On January 15, dashcam footage of a shell or rocket impacting near the checkpoint was uploaded by Kyiv Post journalist Olena Goncharova, who told Storyful she was sent the video directly. The explosion is seen at 1’14″. The driver of the vehicle immediately turns around and flees the area. Storyful verified this video with reference to a number of identifiable landmarks in the video. The filling station seen from 1’47” is located here, a short distance south of the checkpoint. The large pylon seen from 4’20” is located here. The two overpasses seen from 4’35” are located here. This confirms the blast took place in the same area where the CCTV footage above was captured.

Before long, there were multiple discussions sparked over what weapon(s) were used in the incident. Private publication Russia Insider, and several other pro-separatist blogs suggested that the explosion was caused by an MOH-50, more commonly known as a Claymore mine, situated at the side of the bus. ITAR-TASS, a Russian-backed news agency, said on January 19 that the surviving driver of the bus had also claimed the blast was caused by a mine.

There is much counter-analysis that rejects the separatist accounts. The verified CCTV footage above, with multiple blasts visible, contradicts the claims of a mine blast. The OSCE released a corroborating report, saying the shrapnel damage was consistent with “nearby rocket impact”.

OSCE

Analysis carried out by The Interpreter concluded that the rocket which landed near the bus came from the northeast – territory controlled by the Russian-backed separatists. As visible in the image above, a significant amount of the shrapnel damage to the vehicle appears on the right side of the bus, which would back up the claims made by the publication.

This was contested by the deputy prime minister of the DNR, Andrei Purgin, who in an interview with Life News said, “It is possible that there was some kind of incident at the checkpoint, which ended with sporadic shooting.” Purgin said Ukrainian security officials were “not a professional army”. He said many reservists “do not know how to handle weapons”.

By analysing and verifying social media content and with reference to experts in the field at the OSCE, Storyful was quickly able to establish with confidence the blast was not caused by a claymore mine as initially claimed and, indeed, the separatist leader Andreiy Purgin later told Life News the bus had been hit by “shelling”. The CCTV footage above, geolocated to the checkpoint by Storyful, shows multiple blasts at the checkpoint in a manner not consistent with a mine explosion. Calls for an investigation continue, and verified social media content can play a key role in establishing the facts around the case.

2015 will see the coming of age for discovery tools on the social web. It will be the year where finding content as an active pursuit, rather than a passive activity, will become the norm. Every journalist will be expected to watch the wires, pound the digital pavements with multiple dashboards, tune in to content streams and maintain their own social media lists in the quest to discover relevant content, consistently.

Smart journalists are doing this already of course. But, just as creating a personal and active Twitter presence became essentially a requirement for media professionals in recent years, so too will digital discovery capabilities. Demand will lead to a new breed of discovery tools on the market in 2015, tools tuned for these new needs that consolidate all aspects of discovery into one experience. But what will these tools need to do to be effective?

Don’t listen, engage

Firstly, social tools will evolve beyond mere monitoring and listening. This is by far and away the biggest challenge for any discovery tool. From the moment you log in, a flow of relevant content will need to spark creativity and help journalists do their job. Within seconds, our platforms will need to answer one simple question: “what’s happening on the web?”

Storyful’s product teams, charged with building discovery tools for both ourselves and our clients, are lucky. We have an editorial team who continually set out and iterate upon principles of social journalism that, with a little creativity, can teach us a lot about content discovery and the tools we’ll need in 2015.

Authenticity not authority

Authority has been debunked as the currency of the social web. Instead, we need to focus on authenticity. If we operate on the principle that there is always someone closer to the story, we discover content that is unique and engaging.

There’s a reason why Comscore found that “brand engagement rises by 28% when consumers are exposed to both professional content and user-generated product video” (even back in 2012!), or Octoly discovered that “UGC fan videos get 10 times more views than brand-owned content.” As audiences drift ever closer to information overload, authentic content shines out like a beacon. We’ll need tools that trace that path, and seek out the point of origin for a meme or trend.

Every news event creates a community

The first wave are the sources. Eyewitnesses, accidental meme-starters, the creator of an unexpected viral sensation… it all starts with an upload. It’s what happens next that’s crucial.

Virality is created by the rapid sharing of content between small, independent groups linked by connectors. Without connectors, the viral doesn’t go viral. These connectors link multiple groups of people who share and parody and comment and criticize. That’s a community. It sparks to life in seconds and evolves just as quickly. Are your tools tracking these communities as they grow? In 2015, they’ll need to.

Connection beats influence

Too many discovery tools define influencers as people online who have a lot of other people listening to them. The old maxim says that it’s not what you know, it’s who you know, and nowhere is that truer than the social web.

“It’s not what you know, it’s who you know.”

Connection beats influence every time. Rather than seeking out those with large sets of fans or followers, journalists will require tools that identify and understand people who connect independent groups. We all influence our immediate circles, but without connectors to ignite the interest of other communities, ideas (and social content) just smoulder. An idea’s virality needs connectors not influencers, and the tools of 2015 need to help us identify and engage them.

Judge on acceleration, not speed

Speed is the rate at which something moves (don’t think trains in math problems, think about ideas or videos going viral). This is essential in the world of the social web. However, it’s not as important as velocity, which measures both the rate *and* direction. Is that going up or going down? It’s vital to understand this. No one wants to be on the wrong side of a trend.

There’s one thing that supersedes both speed and velocity though. Understanding acceleration is more important. Acceleration is the rate at which something changes velocity. To harness social content, and to discover unique UGC, we need tools that understand acceleration not as a byproduct of virality, but a cause of it.

Acceleration – just like authenticity, community and connection – tells us not only when to react, and to whom, but how. On occasion, discretion is the better part of valor. We might need to react with caution, or hold back on judgment whilst owning the debate. Alternatively, if we apply our instincts correctly, there are moments just waiting to be owned – for journalists, for content marketers and for social media managers alike.

“Acceleration is not a byproduct of virality, but a cause of it.”

In 2015, we’ll see good tools reward your expertise and discard endless listening in favour of active discovery. They will allow communities to define themselves by their connections and be discovered. They will determine acceleration as the currency of real-time. Most of all, however, they will let you tell stories. And in the age of discovery journalism, every good story starts with a piece of social content. How will you discover yours?

]]>1kevindonnellanhttp://blog.storyful.com/?p=67222015-01-03T20:09:50Z2015-01-01T15:37:22ZContinue reading →]]>As we head into a new year, Trends Editor Kevin Donnellan looks back at some of the moments from 2014 that stuck with him and people around the globe.

Throughout last year, we monitored for trending content that emerged from some of the biggest news stories, as well as content that generated a story in itself. Storyful’s Trends team covers many different angles – from hard news to entertainment, from technology to sport and all things in between. These are just five examples that got the world talking.

Facebook on Malaysian Airlines MH17

There were countless column inches devoted to the downing of Malaysian Airlines flight MH17 over Ukraine on July 17. But it was a simple Facebook post that perhaps came closest to capturing the enormous sense of loss following the deaths of 298 passengers and crew. Renuka Manisha Virangna Birbal, who works at Amsterdam’s Schiphol Airport, helped to check in passengers on the flight. She recalled in her post a couple going on their honeymoon, a family of six returning home and two cheerful football fans.

Ebola dominated world headlines for much of the latter half of the year. And social media provided a home for plenty of valuable updates on the spread of the virus, as well as a hothouse for some of the wilder rumours and hysteria connected to the story. The #Saveexcalibur campaign was, depending on your viewpoint, an example of humanity coming together for a worthy cause or a distraction from a far more serious story. Either way, the story of a Spanish dog, threatened with euthanasia because its owner had contracted Ebola, featured heavily on the social web in October.

Sometimes words are not enough. That proved the case following a shock 7-1 victory for Germany in their World Cup semi-final against Brazil. A promotional video from a German radio station provided the most apt summary of the game. Released a day before the match, on July 7, the visual of a German beer glass smashing a Brazilian cocktail proved as apt as it was prescient.

Prince Harry’s Perfect Photobomb

Some trending pieces of content are impossible to predict, particularly when it comes to user-generated content. In a year when we arguably reached selfie-saturation point, this picture of Prince Harry still managed to stand out from the crowd. Within hours of Trevor Shailer’s Facebook friends spotting a royal photobomb this image was being shared around the world.

With so much marketing now based around a vague plan to “go viral” it takes a special type of PR stunt to capture the public’s imagination. This year we discovered combining space travel with lamp chops is one of those ways. Novelist Nikesh Shukla’s promotion for his second book, Meatspace, went viral after he sent a lamp chop to the edge of space. The stunt used a GoPro camera to follow a lamb chop’s journey from Tayyabs, a London Punjabi restaurant, to the picturesque fields of the Cotswolds over 100 miles away. There, “a weather balloon and LOTS of helium” were used to send it into outer space. It then landed, intact, on a threshing machine at a farm in Manston, Dorset.